Linear versus circular thinking

We’re conditioned to think in terms of cause and effect: A + B = C. This paradigm by definition produces results, but not if your goal is relational change within systems.

Monasticism and therapeutic training taught me that cause-effect thinking doesn’t serve us where relational intervention is needed. What’s the alternative? ‘Circularity’ accounts for the complexity of systems. The process of collaborative meaning making is simultaneously diagnosis and cure.

The embodiment of this paradigm is the aim of contemplating a koan. For example, is the mind in the body or is the body in the mind? This sort of question suspends rational thought. Awareness of the here and now opens up. Now, A, B and C are seen clearly as concepts, nothing more. We drop out of the map into the territory of interconnected relational life. Here curiosity is the natural state of the mind and change the only inevitable outcome.